The Ghost and the Angel
by teabizarre
Summary: In a twilight world of trees, Draco finds someone who will forgive him. Harry Potter/Twilight crossover. Slash.
1. Chapter 1

The Ghost and the Angel

Harry Potter/Twilight crossover

Draco Malfoy/Carlisle Cullen

After the war, he was broken.

They didn't prosecute him, even though they had every reason to. They refused to give him his black absolution. They set him free into a void world that was as colourless as his hair, as deathly pale as his skin. The eyes that stared back at him from the mirror were his father's, his father who had been gratified with confinement upon the dark dark sea.

Their forgiveness drove him insane. He wanted a chance at remorse, at self-sacrifice. This was what he owed them. But they refused him and they refused his regret. Maybe that was his punishment. He could no longer tell. He had gone numb.

He fled. He took whatever money he could and he ran. He popped gratefully into the blackness and imagined that he would get lost there; or that he would splinch himself so badly they wouldn't have time to save him. He tore into dark space and hoped, but always a better instinct – a survival instinct – pulled him back from the brink.

He was in a green forest. He had long forgotten on which continent he grazed, in which country's shadows he lurked. It was quiet, half-dark. There was no moon visible through the trees, nor any sun. It was a twilight world. He wondered if he had succeeded, if he had finally managed to die. The green light reminded him of the death curse. This must be it, he thought. He dropped his wand and touched his pale fingers to the strange aura around the trees, a sort of ancient effervescence.

There was a rustle in the foliage. He looked up, fingers still splayed hopefully towards the light. He frowned, sure that he could see the silhouette of a figure in the green mask. He had wanted to be alone here, alone in this eternal garden.

The figure became more prominent as it moved forward gracefully. It was hesitant, drawing away from the light. Draco thought it emanated concern. It was almost distinct in the air, like a smell – luscious, sweet, forgiving, kind. Draco dropped his hands and waited for it to approach.

It seemed to come to a decision. It stepped forward purposefully, into the green twilight.

Draco gasped quietly. He thought it must be an angel.

Melancholy golden eyes frowned at him. Pale skin glittered dully in the faint glow.

"Are you hurt?" the being asked him.

Draco stared into the soft golden eyes, eyes filled with inexplicable grief. Something told Draco that these eyes would forgive him no matter what they witnessed, no matter what he had done, no matter the gross extent of his cruelty.

"Yes," Draco answered. He was thinking of the aching emptiness inside his skull, the echo of pain as he moved. He wanted to tell the man that he was a ghost; merely a shell, his soul bled out by murder and ravage. But he didn't need to – the being understood. And the being did not judge him.


	2. Chapter 2

The Ghost and the Angel

-2-

Twilight/Harry Potter crossover

Draco Malfoy/Carlisle Cullen

Carlisle. That was the name of his angel. Carlisle. Draco's lips formed the word noiselessly, repeated it over and over again. It stitched his soul together; all the fragmented pieces seamlessly reattached and ceased to scar him from the inside.

_This is wrong_ he thought, even as he healed under the angel's cool touch. _I don't deserve this. Rip me up_. Draco's eyes begged for it, but the golden eyes did not respond. For a moment Draco wondered if this was his punishment – this unendurable comfort. But he couldn't doubt the sincerity of his angel. Carlisle did not deny him redemption; he simply didn't see any need for it.

Carlisle.

* * *

"Carlisle." The boy whispered it again and again and the patterns of air it traced on Carlisle's skin aroused something feverish in him. His cool fingertips traced marks of their own as they worked over the boy, checking his body, caressing his murmuring pulse, wiping the pale hair from his eyes. They were as gray as the skies Carlisle's skin confined him to, and they burned with a dark fever. Carlisle recognized the shadow in them—the feeling of not deserving life, of not deserving kindness. For many years, before he had found acceptable sustenance, they had been _his_ eyes.

Carlisle followed the flow of the boy's whispers, touching his fingertips to Draco's restless lips. But it didn't calm him—there was still the ghost of pain and self-loathing in his eyes. _Don't you see?_ Carlisle wanted to ask, as the pink flush in the boy's cheek warmed his palm. _I understand. I understand and I don't care._

His lips felt so incredibly soft.

"Carlisle."

His name was an invitation; Carlisle did his best to comfort him.

* * *

Though Draco could feel the brute strength in Carlisle's fingertips, he left no bruises. His touch was thoughtful and his caresses wary; every movement, every kiss, every shudder of pleasure unfolded slowly. It was as though the angel could feel the ache of Draco's soul at the edge of his every whisper; felt it and feared that swiftness would break him, shatter him beyond recognition.

That the angel would not want to hurt him did strange things to Draco. It was such a foreign concept to him: to live without threat or fear of threat, to just _be_. But Draco could not speak these things out loud. His breath he reserved to keep his heart beating as it smoldered back to life in his empty chest; his words he spared for Carlisle's name.

Because whenever he said it, Carlisle's lips would hunt across his skin to find his, and another little piece of himself would heal.

* * *

Two kinds of gold: white and yellow. They lay curled into each other like an intricate ornament, the first rays of dawn filtering through the muffle of the canopy of trees. Pale white and purple; diamonds and silk. A ghost and an angel enraptured with each other.


	3. Chapter 3

The Ghost and the Angel

-3-

Harry Potter/Twilight crossover

Carlisle Cullen/Draco Malfoy

Carlisle watched the boy dozing in his arms. He was peaceful in slumber: the defensiveness around his eyes had vanished as Carlisle had rocked him to sleep. He'd murmured Carlisle's name once, but then it was all silence and breathing and beating, and Carlisle realized what heaven felt like:

It was the pressure of Draco's head on his chest, it was fingertips brushed along the jawline, it was the length of one body held against another, and eyes so gray they swallowed the sky.

All his existence, Carlisle had been a ghost—a shadow guardian who risked the light so he could attempt to heal. Not because he sought redemption—not even that much—just because he wanted to help. And all his life he had lived in fear that someone would see through him; see him for what he really was.

_I am a ghost_. The thought had haunted him for three centuries and still there was no reprieve. And he had made peace with it, peace with knowing that, even to his family, he was merely an outline—an incomplete sketch, a caricature of what they needed him to be. He was their leader and he was their soul; but to Draco, to this being with his guarded eyes, he had become something more, something complete...something _human_.

Carlisle held the boy closer, brushing back the pearl-kissed hair that littered his forehead, the friction of their union still velvet on his skin and sweet in the air.

* * *

Draco dreamed.

He was in a forest in a foreign land. Green light dappled the underbrush; moss and silky veins hugged the trees, and large spiderwebs shimmered between branches. This forest wasn't as silent as the ones he'd hiked through as a child. The movements were subtle—the leaves shifting as the rain fell, the moisture-soaked earth muffling the motion of animals. But there was something else there, something omniscient; something that whispered to the birds to be silent when things that did not belong stirred the foliage. It was the secret of the trees, and they were unwilling to share it.

Draco had a secret too, in this dream. His secret was cold as stone and smooth as silk and glass; he had eyes the colour of syrup in sunlight and feathery eyelashes; his secret's lips were full and kind and gentle; and Draco's hand fitted perfectly in the hollow between his shoulder blades, and around the junction of his hipbone, and along his snowy neck.

Draco did not want to share this secret of his. He wanted to keep it locked away in his heart, away from where reality could get it. He did not know what he had done to invoke it, but he wanted it all to himself, this angelic being named Carlisle.

But how long could one mortal bind an angel fallen? How long could one ghost claim divinity for itself, even in a phantom world? Every second was a grace, a miracle in itself, and every second was necessarily the last.

Draco wrapped the bile around his heart and shut out the fringes of light, afraid of what he would find if he opened his eyes. The aftershock of again realizing that he was still alone, still gagged with guilt? That everything was an illusion after all, a kind of sweet, reaping torture? Consciousness was his nightmare; the dreams were better.

Draco didn't _want_ to wake up. So instead he dreamed.

* * *

Carlisle heard the murmur in the boy's chest—the murmur of a toiling heart. Its beats were becoming fainter and more discordant, as if the internal mechanism that controlled them had given up on trying to keep going.

And all that Carlisle had seen in the gray eyes of the child wrenched through him, and all that he could do to stop it, to halt it, to save this angel stood out in stark relief. And etched into the fiber of Carlisle's being was the eternal question of who exactly he would be saving, and of who really needed to be saved.

Would it be for his sake or the boy's? An angel for a ghost?

Carlisle hesitated, torn between desire and blasphemy. Beneath his palm, Draco's heart drummed its last relief.

* * *

**A/N:** And that, as they say, is a wrap! Thanks to all my reviewers – please review again. Good ending or bad ending? Let know what you think! =)


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